Articles

Since 2001, we have been describing how mainstream newspapers and broadcasters operate as a propaganda system for the elite interests that dominate modern society. The costs of their disinformation in terms of human and animal suffering, and environmental breakdown, are incalculable. We show how news and commentary are ‘filtered’ by the media’s profit-orientation, by its dependence on advertisers, parent companies, wealthy owners and official news sources..

We check the media’s version of events against credible facts and opinion provided by journalists, academics and specialist researchers. We then publish both versions, together with our commentary, in free Media Alerts and invite readers to deliver their verdict both to us and to mainstream journalists through the email addresses provided in our ’Suggested Action’ at the end of each alert. We urge correspondents to adopt a polite, rational and respectful tone at all times – we strongly oppose all abuse and personal attack. We also publish Cogitations, exploring related personal and philosophical themes.

“The creators and editors of Medialens, David Edwards and David Cromwell, have had such influence in a short time that, by holding to account those who, it is said, write history’s draft, they may well have changed the course of modern historiography. They have certainly torn up the ‘ethical blank cheque’, which Richard Drayton referred to, and have exposed as morally corrupt ‘the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial...’. Without Media Lens during the attack on and occupation of Iraq, the full gravity of that debacle might have been consigned to oblivion, and to bad history.” (John Pilger, foreword, David Edwards and David Cromwell, Guardians Of Power - The Myth Of The Liberal Media, Pluto Press, 2006, p.x)

In 2001, the BBC’s then political editor, Andrew Marr, described Media Lens as “pernicious and anti-journalistic”. (Email to Media Lens, October 7, 2001)

“It is a closed and distorting little world that selects and twists its facts to suit its arguments, a curious willy-waving exercise... Think a train spotters' club run by Uncle Joe Stalin.” (Peter Beaumont, ‘Microscope on Medialens,’ The Observer, June 18, 2006)